Where are the Wraiths in the book story line? Where are the Inu in game, are we going to get them some time? Why doesn't Calis have elemental spell books? Why can't these characters be in the game as champions instead of just Sovs? And why not Tandis and Talax as Sovs? Or Galor? When is another book coming out. Does Galor go apeshit crazy soon, he seems the type...

For those of you who, like me, always imagined how wonderful it would be to publish their dream novel, think again. It's not fun.

I wrote Destiny's Embers, from scratch, several times. The first draft was written from omniscient POV (ala Lord of the Rings). But RH wanted Destiny's Embers written from first person (i.e. pick a POV character and write it from their perspective) which was a lot tougher for me as I am relatively weak at writing descriptive text (I like telling stories, not writing scenes).

There's a book's worth of "stuff" that had to be taken out of Destiny's Embers because it was story that none of the characters would have known about.

In the first draft, Draginol was the main character. Xander became the main character in the book because he's the most relatable (sic).

If anyone here has ever wanted their dream book published, or knows someone, they should bring their posts here. Because I learned a lot (LOT) about how books are made today versus what most people (myself included) thought they were made before actually going through the process.

One of my biggest beefs with the release of my book has been the Amazon reviews where a handful of jerks from QuarterToThree.com took their political vengeance (i.e. people who disagree with my politics from a political discussion forum) out on my book but never read the actual book beyond the free kindle sample.

My other biggest beef is that there's not much money to be made writing books compared to having a traditional job. While RH is happy with the sales of the book and have requested the sequel at some point, I'm not sure I could justify writing it. Unless you're at the top 1% of your field, it's not something you can easily make a living with.

As an unpublished writer I feel for you. I stick to short stories and I plan to put them up on the internet for free as soon as I'm dead so no one can criticize me. I wish Google had an "Email this upon my death" button.

You should go for ebook self-publishing instead of doing it the traditional way if you really want to write (you won't do much money either, but you will be able to write the book you want to write). That market is huge in the USA right now, and much more interesting for novel writers than the traditional way (which is dying slowly).

I just finished the book tonight, and having read the reviews on Amazon prior to purchasing the book, I disagree with their criticism.

In my opinion, it's not a terrible book, it's not bad at all. Although the plot fits the basic fantasy trope, it's not necessarily unoriginal. Ignoring any literary complaints (which, for a first novel by a software developer, exceeded my expectations), my biggest complaints are the obvious prequel stature of the book and the surprising lack of tie-in with the game. Aside from some shared names, races, and very high-level details and history from the game, the book lacks most of the concepts from the game that I expected to see (sovereigns, desecrated lands, recognizable magic and higher abundance of shards). To be fair, there is a bit of correlation between the history in the books and the character descriptions of the default characters in the game, but otherwise, not as much content to tie the book to as solidly to the game as I would have expected.

With all of that said, I still plan to read FrogBoy's follow-up fiction ventures. Like I said, it's not bad.

EDIT: I realized that the game is set a century after the Cataclysm; and the book, millennia. So, I guess it's tied-in about as much as a few hundred years can allow. My bad!